Born to Film and Two Fathers

Born to Film

Danny Lyon
Bleak Beauty Video

Born to Film, 1982, New York and Mexico, b&w, 33 minutes, a young boy emerges from the filmic history of his past.

“‘Born to Film’ is, among other things, intimately autobiographical, interspersing footage of Lyon’s own young son with film shot in the 1930’s by Lyon’s father, a doctor who immigrated from Germany. . . Lyon’s passionate vision has deepened and grown in resonance and the film is not just family or even social history, but about human continuity, the power of instinct to survive, the grace that love and play bring to it, the wonder of being alive.”Thomas Albright, San Francisco Chronicle

“. . . in his relationship with his father and son in Born To Film, Lyon serves as a connecting link, collaging together separate lives. The disparate, often incoherent or contradictory images are presented with a passion and directness which gives them reality. . . ”Pamela Allara, Pictures from Films/Films from Pictures, 1984

Two Fathers

Danny Lyon
Bleak Beauty Video

Two Fathers, 2005, New York, 30 mins. The child star of Born to Film, Raphael is now a twenty-seven year old who returns to his father’s farm to plant corn and “experience fatherhood”.

Intercut as a film that takes place in the world of Germany in the 1920’s, and Queens, of the 1940’s, as Dr. Ernst Lyon’s remarkable album photographs bring to life worlds long gone. Time is collapsed. “Two Fathers” is a filmic meditation on life, age, family and death. Completed with support from the George Eastman House program for film preservation.

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Search for:

Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Where are we going?

This generation born in war, born in the jail cells of the South, born at the Pentagon march, watches in disbelief as the country is paved over, malls replacing corn fields, synthetic food replacing corn, cash replacing value. What has become of us? Is the country brain dead? Is this what we have done with our freedom? Our greatest surviving value is greed. Is that what our legacy will be? What shall we tell the children?

The 16mm Films of Danny Lyon, preserved as high resolution scans

After his ground breaking work as a photojournalist in the 1960’s, Danny Lyon turned to films, making a series of non-fiction films in the 1970’s and 1980’s. With the recent recognition of the 2016 de Young/Whitney retrospective, funds were provided to preserve these remarkable 16mm films. High resolution digital scans were made from the original A&B negative rolls under the close supervision of the artist. The DVD covers themselves, first made for VHS tapes, have been recognized for their power and realism, and are on display at the San Francisco Museum of Art show which opened November 3rd, 2016.

These are great digital copies of some of the best non-fiction films of the seventies and eighties, exclusively available from Bleak Beauty.

The entire body of Danny Lyon 16mm film work can also be streamed on Vimeo. The sixties meets the twenty first century.View Bleak Beauty Films